CHARLES I 1625-1649 PART I—THE SEAMEN

The life of Charles, Lord Howard of Effingham and Earl of Nottingham, commander of the English fleet in 1588, and for thirty-three years Lord Admiral of England, may be regarded as the link between the mediæval and the modern navy. Born in 1536, and dying in 1624, his era connects the cogs and crayers, carracks and balingers of the Plantagenets, then hardly out of use, with the established Royal Navy of James I, a fleet divided into rates; controlled on present principles, and differing but little in essentials from that existing up to the introduction of armour and machine guns. His period of authority included the struggle which shaped isolated maritime essays into an organised navy, and fashioned a school of seamanship of which the traditions have never since been lost. Although we cannot point to any important measure known to be directly due to his initiative, his influence, during at any rate the earlier half of his time of office, must, judging by results, have been always exercised towards the selection of capable men for command, towards the adoption of any promising invention or improvement, and towards the encouragement and welfare of the seamen on whom the stress of work and danger must fall, and for whom he always showed a humane sympathy. At the time of trial he proved himself equal to his responsibilities; and that he was so well served by his subordinates of all grades implies a confidence and respect on their part not given merely to a peer and an officer of the crown, but to one in whose skill, care, and kindliness, experience had already taught men of all ranks to confide. Then, as now, only an able leader had good officers and willing men. He clung too long to office, and his old age was sullied by an eagerness for money amounting almost to avarice, and by the unwavering support given to one as unworthy of it as Mansell; no allegation, however, was ever made against his own honesty, either of act or purpose, and for the rest his years are his best excuse. He has a right to be judged by his season of vigorous manhood, when acting with the other sea heroes of the age of Elizabeth, among whom he holds an honourable place.

The new Political Conditions.

The reign of James I may be looked upon as a maritime truce, during which old antagonisms remained latent while new ones were springing into life. The contest with Spain was practically terminated, that power having been vanquished not so much by English superiority of seamanship as by the national decay due to causes patent to all students of history. But now other and more dangerous rivals were to be faced in France and the United Provinces, both wealthier than England, the former temporarily strong in a centralised monarchy of which the resources were to be wielded by Richelieu, and in an army reorganised and a navy created by him, the latter spiritually strong from the same sources as had stirred English thought, with traditions of mercantile supremacy reaching back to the dawn of European commerce, and proud of a successful contest with the greatest of European states. Moreover the fresh strife was to be waged under less favourable conditions than heretofore. Against Spain England occupied a position of strategical advantage; her fleets concentrated at any western port could strike at either the mother country or at the straggling, disconnected colonies of the new world. Against France and the Low Countries she was between hammer and anvil, her own harbours continually threatened, her commerce exposed to constant attack, and her fleets quite insufficient in strength for their new duties. Nor had the interval of peace been utilised in view of the approaching conflict, although it cannot be said that warnings were wanting. The royal ships were fewer in number and of little greater strength than at the death of Elizabeth; few improvements had been effected in their construction, while seamanship had greatly deteriorated, owing to the decay of the fishing industry, the lack of enterprise and long voyages, and the bad treatment of the men. England was still greatly dependent on Russia for cordage and other naval necessaries, an administrative weakness of which Spain had endeavoured to take advantage in 1597 by negotiating with the rulers of Russia and Poland for a cessation of such exports to England and Holland,[943] but a weakness which might have formidable results with enemies planted on the line of communication. The Dutch had taken the lesson to heart, for, since that year, they had made their own cordage.[944]

England, France, and Holland.

An examination of the comparative wealth and state revenues of the three countries would show the relative position of England to be still less favourable. Although the commerce of this country had increased during the reign of James, the royal revenue, except that drawn from the customs, had remained nearly stationary, while the administration was more extravagant than that of Elizabeth, and the salaries of officials and the prices of materials and labour were higher, owing to the influx of the precious metals. The wars of France and the Netherlands had indirectly given room for expansion to English commercial and speculative activity; but, in the one case, the reign of Henry IV, and, in the other, the truce with Spain had enabled both countries to meet their rival on more equal terms. The same causes operated throughout the reign of Charles, for it may be held that the place of England as a naval power in 1642 was even relatively lower than in 1625; and this without reference to the question of good or bad government, for any attempt to maintain a maritime supremacy comparative to the last years of the sixteenth century would have entailed national bankruptcy. That strength was a temporary and, in a sense, artificial condition, attributable not to the actual power or resources of the country, but to the momentary cessation of the compression of mercantile rivalry and competition, to the stimulus due to the increase of circulating coin, and in a lesser degree, to the wave of moral exaltation then moving the Teutonic races.[945] Indeed, it may be said in favour of the ship-money writs that but for the fleets they enabled Charles to send to sea, and so present a semblance of power, the strife with France and Holland might have been precipitated by nearly half a century. That they had some such intimidating influence was shown by the care taken by the French fleets, also cruising, to avoid meeting them, and the efforts of the French court to evade the question of the dominion of the narrow seas.

It was fortunate for England that the troubles of the Fronde coincided with the first Dutch war, for had the strength of France been then thrown into the balance against fleets and dockyards still organised on a Tudor scale, which had undergone little expansion during two reigns, the maritime glory of this country might have had an early end. Even if Charles had not quarrelled with his parliaments, no grants of theirs could have kept pace with the rapid growth of French prosperity; in 1609, after paying off an enormous amount of crown debts, the yearly revenue was 20,000,000 livres,[946] and in 1645 it was £3,560,000.[947] The ordinary revenue of the English crown in 1610 was £461,000, in 1623 £539,000, in 1635 £618,000,[948] and for the five years from 1637 to 1641 it averaged £895,000 a year, exclusive of ship money.[949] It has been difficult to obtain any statistics for the United Provinces, but, as the trade and commercial marine on which they relied were greater than those of England, it is obvious that a contest with France alone would have overwhelmingly strained our resources during the reign of Charles I, and that an alliance of the two states would, in all probability, have been most disastrous to us. M. Lefèvre Pontalis indeed, in the first chapter of his ‘Vie de Jean de Witt,’ states exactly that the Dutch merchant marine comprised 10,000 sail and 168,000 men; but, as he gives no authority and may be referring to any one of the first seventy-five years of the seventeenth century, the information in that form is valueless for purposes of comparison.[950]

The Cadiz Fleet of 1625

The accession of Charles led to a more active prosecution of the war with Spain, signalised by the Cadiz expedition of 1625, and the administrative incidents of this voyage enable us to measure the decadence of seamanship and the utter collapse of the official executive during the twenty years of peace. Efforts had been made to get the fleet away during the summer, but owing to want of money, stores, and men, it did not sail till 8th October, too late in the season to do effective service. Disease raged among the soldiers and sailors assembled at Plymouth, and not a boat went ashore but some of its men deserted. Of 2000 recruits sent first to Holland and then to Plymouth only 1500 arrived at the sea-port, of whom 500 were ill;[951] and the few professional sea captains there, who saw the unpromising material in men and supplies being collected, continually warned the Council and Buckingham of the results to be expected from the quality of the men and provisions and the want of clothing.[952] When the expedition finally sailed, its equipment appears to have been rather that of a defeated and disheartened fleet returning home after long service than of a long planned and prepared enterprise. The ships were leaky and their gear defective; the St George was fitted with sails which were used by the Triumph in 1588, while her shrouds were ‘the old Garland’s and all starke rattan.’ The Lion was in such bad condition that she had to be left behind. The cordage supplied was rotten but ‘fairly tard ovar.’ An officer writes: ‘There was great wrong done ... by pretending the ships were fit to go to sea.’[953] Even before they left port the casks were so faulty that beer came up in the ships’ pumps, so that by November they were reduced to beverage of cider ‘that stinks worse than carrion, and have no other drink.’ A few days after leaving Plymouth it was already thought necessary to put five men on four men’s allowance, and by December they were on half rations which ‘stinks so as no dog of Paris Garden would eat it.’ Men ill fed and ill clothed, sent across the Bay in early winter, easily broke down, and when they arrived off Cadiz, after a twenty-one days’ voyage, and before even seeing the enemy, one-fourth of the men on six of the men-of-war were on the sick list.[954] The Convertine had only fifteen men in a watch. In November ‘the sickness is so great that there are not seamen enough to keep the watches,’[955] and a month later there were not ten men fit for duty on board the St George.[956]

Sir Edward Cecil, Viscount Wimbledon, the commander-in-chief, was a soldier of only average capacity accustomed to the methodical Dutch military discipline, and he was aghast at the ways of his officers, who, besides being ignorant of their work, shared with their men what plunder there was. Many of the captains were landsmen who depended on their subordinates to handle their vessels, and these men, unaccustomed to large ships and to sailing in comparatively close order, were constantly in difficulties. If the subordinates were good seamen, they were mostly contemptuous of their commanders. Sir Thos. Love, captain of the Anne Royal, issued orders to the whole fleet without Cecil’s knowledge; the master of the Reformation flatly refused to obey his captain’s commands. It does not seem to have occurred to Cecil or his advisers that any sailing orders were necessary during the voyage out, and the result of independent management was that collisions were frequently occurring; beakheads, galleries, and bowsprits were carried away, and ‘the confusion was such that some had their starboard when other had their larboard tacks on board.’[957] Sometimes the ships chased each other, under the impression that they were enemies, although the differences between the English and Spanish schools of shipbuilding were almost as great as those to be observed in a cruiser of the middle of this century and a merchantman of the same time. Two transports with 300 soldiers on board, perhaps thinking that they had better prospects of success by themselves than with Cecil, deserted and turned pirates.[958]

The flagship was the Anne Royal, Nottingham’s Ark Royal of 1588, of which he lovingly said that she was ‘the odd ship of the world for all conditions.’ She was handy enough for the Elizabethan seamen who built her and knew how to work a ship at sea, but she did not win favour in the eyes of Cecil and his officers, who complained that they could not make her lie to and that she rolled too much for their dainty stomachs. Nottingham’s opinion of them might have been even more scathing than theirs of the Anne Royal. More justly Cecil expressed his astonishment at the amount of theft which prevailed. He could not prevent his captains pillaging the cargoes of prizes, ‘a thing of such custom at sea that I cannot see how it will be remedied.’ The men he considers the worst ever seen; ‘they are so out of order and command and so stupefied that punish them or beat them they will scarce stir.’[959] Sick and starving it was not their fault if they were dull and inefficient, but neither Cecil nor those next him in rank were the men to rouse English sailors to those efforts which, when well led, they can be moved to make under circumstances of surpassing distress.

Perhaps this Cadiz expedition indicates the low water mark of English seamanship. There have been many previous and subsequent occasions when fleets were sent to sea equally ill found and ill provided, but never, before or since, have we such accounts of utter incapacity in the mere everyday work of a sailor’s duties. The shameful picture of that confused mass of ships crowded together helplessly, without order or plan, colliding with each other, chasing or deserting at their own will, the officers losing spars and sails from ignorance of the elementary principles of their art, is the indictment against the government of James I which had allowed the seamanship of Elizabeth to die out in this generation. It was the first time that the new system of the commissionership had been tried by conditions of active service, and on the side of stores and provisions, for which they were mainly responsible, the breakdown was as complete as on the side of navigation. Assuming their honesty, which was probable, but of which some of their contemporaries hint doubts, they were mostly merchants or court officials, unacquainted with naval matters, and evidently unable to adapt the routine peace control to which they were accustomed to the wider requirements of war time. As even the normal method of inspection was almost nominal, depending mainly on subordinate officials of little character, capacity, or responsibility, such stores as were now bought, under the pressure of immediate necessity, usually proved expensive and bad. Among the higher officials the impression given by the State Papers, now and afterwards, is that their chief desire was to get money sent to them on some pretext—purchase of clothes or arms, payment of wages, etc.—and that they could then trust to their own ingenuity to account for its expenditure, possibly for the benefit of the service, certainly for their own. Not even a nominal system of inspection existed in the victualling department. The two contractors, Apsley and Darrell, appear, when the Commissioners had once given their orders, to have sent what provisions they pleased on board the ships, quite independently of any supervision or of any way of calling them to account, for supplies infinitely more deadly to our men than the steel and lead of the enemy.[960]

The Disorganisation:—The Return of the Fleet.

Naval historians have usually considered the condition of the seaman, a mere pawn in the game, as of little account compared with graphic descriptions of sea fights and the tactics of opposing fleets. He had, however, not only existence but memories, and an examination of his treatment under the government of Charles I, will systematise scattered references, and may go far to explain why the Royal Navy ‘went solid’ for the Parliament in 1642. We have seen that there was little demand for his services during the reign of James I, though the few men employed had reason to be mutinous and discontented under their scanty fare and uncertain wages. With Charles on the throne the seagoing population was called away from the fisheries and trading voyages to man the royal fleets, although the attitude of Parliament caused smaller resources to be available to support their cost. The sailor, being a despised and inarticulate quantity, soon felt the result. When the ships of the Cadiz fleet straggled ignominiously home in midwinter, some to Kinsale, some to Milford, Falmouth, Plymouth, and other western ports, a cry for help went up from the captains and officials concerned. The Anne Royal with 130 dead and 160 sick, had scarcely fifteen men in a watch; a vessel at Milford had not sufficient to man her long boat, and the dried fish remaining was ‘so corrupt and bad that the very savour thereof is contagious.’[961] Pennington, who was usually more intelligible than grammatical, wrote from Plymouth that ‘the greatest part of the seamen being sick or dead, so that few of them have sufficient sound men to bring their ships about,’[962] and ‘a miserable infection among them, and they die very fast.’ St Leger told Conway that it would not be possible to move the men till they had recovered some strength, ‘they stink as they go, and the poor rags they have are rotten, and ready to fall off,’ and that many of the officers were in nearly as bad case as their men.[963] But the government had expended all its available means in the preparation, such as it was, of the expedition, and could neither pay the men off nor provide them with clothes, victuals, or medical aid. Moreover, the attention of Buckingham was fixed rather on the equipment of another fleet than on the plight of the men, a condition which he doubtless regarded as one they should accept naturally, and a detail unworthy of la haute politique in which he and his master intrepidly considered themselves such proficients. Pennington had orders to collect forty sail at Plymouth, but as yet had only four ships.[964] There were no stores, no surgeons, and no drugs, he reported; and everything on board the returned vessels would have to be replaced, even the hammocks being ‘infected and loathsome;’ the mayor of the town would not permit the sick men to be put ashore, so that contagion spread among the few healthy remaining. He hints that there is little hope of getting fresh men to go when they had their probable fate before their eyes. All the remedy the Council seemed to find was to order the Commissioners to prepare estimates for fleets of various strengths, while the Anne Royal and four other ships were lying in the Downs with ‘their companies almost grown desperate,’ the men dying daily and the survivors mutinous. In March, Pennington, who was an honest, straightforward man and a good seaman, and who wrote to Buckingham in an independent and even reproving way, which reflects some credit on both of them in that servile age, says that he has twenty-nine ships, but neither victuals, clothes, nor men; that those sent down run away as fast as they are pressed. ‘I wish you were a spectator a little, to hear their cries and exclamations; here die eight or ten daily,’ and, if something is not done ‘you will break my heart.’[965] Under James the men considered that the galleys were better than the royal service; thus early in the reign of his son they had come to the conclusion that hanging was preferable.[966]

But Buckingham was quite superior to all such particulars. Complaints had been made to him that merchantmen were chased into the Downs by Dunkirkers, while the men-of-war lying there did not even weigh anchor. He sharply censured Palmer, who was in command, but Palmer’s reply was a variation of the old legal defence; they had not been chased, and if they had been he was without victuals or necessaries enabling him to move.[967] As the captain of one of his ships wrote to Nicholas that he had no sails, and that he could not obtain their delivery without cash payment, the second portion of his statement was probably true. The greatest stress, however, fell upon Pennington at Plymouth. It need hardly be said that there was not yet a dockyard there; but there was not even a government storehouse, the lack of which mattered less as there were no stores, such provisions as were procured being urgently needed for the daily requirements of the crews. In April Pennington heard that there was £2000 coming down, but he was already indebted £2500 for which he had pledged his own credit, and his estate ran risk of foreclosure unless the mortgage was cleared.[968] He adds: ‘I pray you to consider what these poor souls have endured for the space of these thirteen or fourteen months by sickness, badness of victuals, and nakedness.’

Official routine worked, in some respects, smoothly enough. If some of the officers and men—like those of the St Peter, a prize in the royal service—petitioned Buckingham direct, begging for their discharge, saying that they could get neither pay nor food, and would have perished from want if they had not been supplied by their friends, they were referred to the Commissioners, who suavely remarked: ‘there are many other ships in the same predicament.’[969] If others applied direct to the Commissioners, they were told to go to those who hired them, as the Navy Board would ‘neither meddle nor make’ with them, ‘which answer of theirs I find strange,’ says Pennington.[970] One day the crew of the Swiftsure mutinied and went ashore, intending to desert in a body. He went after them and persuaded them to return, but ‘their cases are so lamentable that they are not much to be blamed for when men have endured misery at sea and cannot be relieved at home in their own country, what a misery of miseries is it!‘[971] Not all the officers of rank were as kindly as Pennington; Sir John Watts could only see in the clamour of ragged and starving men ‘insolent misdemeanours.’ At Harwich the mutineers vowed that they would no longer shiver on board, but would lie in the best beds in the town, all the elysium the poor fellows aspired to. It almost seemed as though the naval service was disintegrating and that such organisation as it had attained, was to be broken up, since the shipwrights and labourers at the dockyards were also unpaid, although they did not find it so difficult to obtain credit. Pennington was now almost despairing, and said that having kept the men together by promises as long as he could, only immediate payment would prevent them deserting en masse, and ‘it would grieve any man’s heart to hear their lamentations, to see their wants and nakedness, and not to be able to help them.’[972] There is a curious resemblance between these words and those used nearly forty years before by Nottingham in describing the condition of the men who had saved England from the Armada, and who were likewise left to starve and die, their work being done. But any comparison is, within certain limits, in favour of Charles and Buckingham. Elizabeth had money, but all through her life held that men were cheaper than gold. In 1626 the sailors were the first victims of the quarrel between King and Parliament, a struggle in which, and in its legacy of foreign wars, they bore a heavy share of the burden, and from which even to-day they have reaped less benefit than any other class of the community.

The original estimate for the Cadiz fleet was under £300,000, but in 1631 it was calculated that altogether, for the land and sea forces, it had amounted to half a million,[973] and as the government found it impossible to procure this or any serviceable sum they resorted to the expedient of nominally raising wages all round.[974] The seaman’s monthly pay, ten shillings during the reign of James, had been temporarily raised to fourteen for the attack on Cadiz; in future it was to be permanently fifteen shillings, subject to a deduction of sixpence for the Chatham chest, fourpence for a preacher, and twopence for a surgeon, and as the scale remained in force till the civil war, and was eventually paid with comparative punctuality, the full list for all ranks, per month may be appended here:[975]

£ s d £ s d

Captain[976] 4 14 4 to 14 0 0

Lieutenant[977] 3 0 0 ” 3 10 0

Master 2 6 8 ” 3 13 9

Pilot 1 10 0 ” 2 5 0

Master’s mate 1 10 0 ” 2 5 0

Boatswain 1 3 4 ” 2 5 0

Boatswain’s mate 1 0 8 ” 1 6 3

Purser 1 3 4 ” 2 0 0

Surgeon 1 10 0

Surgeon’s mate 1 0 0

Quartermaster 1 0 0 ” 1 10 0

Quartermaster’s mate 0 17 6 ” 1 5 0

Yeomen of { jeers } 1 1 0 ” 1 5 0

{ sheets }

{ tacks }

{ halliards }

Carpenter 1 1 0 ” 1 17 6

Carpenter’s mate 0 18 8 ” 1 5 0

Corporal[978] 0 18 8 ” 1 10 4

Gunner 1 3 4 ” 2 0 0

Gunner’s mate 0 18 8 ” 1 2 6

Cook 1 0 0 ” 1 5 0

Master Trumpeter 1 5 0 ” 1 8 0

Other trumpeters 1 3 4

Drummer 1 0 0

Fifer 1 0 0

Armourer 1 1 0

Gunmaker 1 1 0

Seaman 0 15 0

Gromet 0 11 3

Boy 0 7 6

The purpose in appointing lieutenants was

‘to breed young gentlemen for the sea service.... The reason why there are not now so many able sea-captains as there is use of is because there hath not been formerly allowance for lieutenants, whereby gentlemen of worth and quality might be encouraged to go to sea. And if peace had held a little longer the old sea captains would have been worn out, as that the state must have relied wholly on mechanick men that have been bred up from swabbers, and ... to make many of them would cause sea service in time to be despised by gentlemen of worth, who will refuse to serve at sea under such captains.’[979]

According to this view the original naval lieutenant was equivalent to the modern midshipman, in which case his pay seems very high, unless it is to be explained by the tendency to favour social position. The midshipman, introduced somewhat later, was at first only an able seaman with special duties. The foregoing extract is in itself a vivid illustration of the reasons for the loathing, yearly growing in intensity, the seamen, or ‘mechanick men,’ had for their courtier captains.

The Disorganisation:—Poverty of the Crown.

As at the time the crown was making these liberal promises it had not sufficient money to fit out two ships required for special service on the Barbary coast, and as vessels were being kept in nominal employment because even a few hundred pounds could not be raised wherewith to pay off their crews, it is not surprising that the men showed no renewed eagerness to die lingeringly for their country, and that the proclamation of April needed a corollary in the shape of another threatening deserters with the penalty of death. This was issued on 18th June, and a week later the crew of the Lion at Portsmouth, 400 or 500 strong, left the ship with the intention of marching up to London. The officers read the last proclamation to them and promised to write about their grievances; but the men, quite unappalled, replied that ‘their wives and children were starving and they perishing on board.’[980] Wives and children were neglected factors in the dynastic combinations of Charles and Buckingham, and husbands and fathers might consider themselves amply rewarded if their efforts enabled the King to restore the Palatinate to his nephew. The Commissioners complained despondingly that they were unable to progress with the new fleet while the back wages were unpaid, and ‘the continual clamour ... doth much distract and discourage us.’[981] The Swiftsure at Portsmouth had only 150 instead of 250 men, of whom 50 were raw boys, and all the other ships there were but half manned. Palmer, commanding in the Downs, had never suffered such extremity even in war time, he said, and his men flatly refused to work unless they were fed, a really justifiable form of strike. At this date there were six men-of-war and ten armed merchantmen at Portsmouth, but, says Gyffard, the men ‘run away as fast as they are sent ... all things so out of order as that I cannot see almost any possibility for the whole fleet to go to sea in a long time.’[982] The intensity of Captain Gyffard’s feelings somewhat obscured his clearness of expression.

The lessons of the previous year appear to have taught nothing; the victuallers were still sending in provisions of the old bad quality, and the beef sent to Portsmouth weighed only 2 lbs. the piece, instead of the 4 lbs. for which the crown was charged. The Chatham shipwrights threatened to cease work unless they were paid, and Pennington, now at Portsmouth, wrote that after all the preparations, extending over some months, there were no hammocks and not even cans or platters to eat and drink from. All these requests and complaints poured in nearly daily on Buckingham who should have been an organising genius to deal with the complex disorder, instead of merely a man of some talent and much optimism, also troubled by a refractory Parliament, perverse continental powers scornful of his ingenuous diplomacy, and the varied responsibilities of all the other departments of the government. In September the Commissioners pointed out to him that a debt of £4000 a month was being incurred for want of £14,000 to pay off the men, who were now reduced to stealing their daily food; those in the river were so disorderly that the Board could not meet without danger, as the sailors threatened to break the doors down on them, and the shipwrights from Chatham had besieged them for twenty days.[983]

By this time, however, as the result of requiring the coast towns to provide ships, forced loans, and other measures, Willoughby was at sea with a fleet, but one which was a third weaker in strength than had been intended. Before reaching Falmouth he found twenty tuns of ‘stinking beer’ on his own ship, and the rest of the squadron was as ill off. The men were ‘poor and mean’ physically, and deficient in number, the stores generally bad and insufficient, there being only enough provisions to go to the Straits of Gibraltar and back again, and the excursion being useless, because too late in the year, when all the enemies’ fleets had returned home.[984] The complaint of want of men was met by an order that he should take on board 500 soldiers to help in working the ships; in two vessels intended for him two-thirds of the men had run away, being too glad to escape at the cost of forfeiting five months’ wages due to them, and the Commissioners proposed to fill their places ‘by forcing men to work with threatenings, having no money to pay them.’[985] The artless belief of their kind in the efficacy of threats once more placed them in a foolish position. The crew of the Happy Entrance refused to sail, saying that they would rather be hanged ashore than starve at sea,[986] but even the relentless egotism of Charles was not equal to hanging them.

It may be said for the Commissioners that their situation was not a happy one, seeing that they were continually ordered to perform impossibilities. When they were told to provide fresh ships and men, they retorted that they were already keeping twelve vessels in pay for want of money to discharge the crews, the wages bill alone running at the rate of £1782 a month.[987] Other men sent away with tickets, which could not be paid when presented, congregated round their house whenever they met for business, shouting and threatening and causing them actual personal fear. There was £20,000 owing to the victuallers, and they, in December, refused any further supplies until they had some money, the result being that, at Portsmouth, ‘the common seamen grew insolent for want of victuals,’ wrote Sir John Watts, who, in his own person, only suffered from the insolence of a well-lined belly. Sir Allen Apsley, the chief victualling contractor, justified himself to the council and pointed out the serious consequences to be feared:[988]

‘By the late mutinous carriage of those few sailors of but one of H.M. ships the Reformation, the humours of the rest of the fleet may be conjectured.... What disorder, then, may be feared if twenty times that number, having no promise of speedy payment, no victuals, fresh or salt, nor ground for the officers to persuade or control—for alas! say they, when men have no money nor clothes to wear (much less to pawn), nor victuals to eat, what would you have them do? Starve? This is likely to be the condition of the ships now in the Downs and those at Portsmouth, having not two days’ victuals if equally divided ... not having any victuals at all but from hand to mouth upon the credit of my deputies who are able to trust no longer, so as this great disorder may be seen bearing very near even to the point of extremity.’

About 2200 men were in this plight, and matters must indeed have been bad when it was no longer to the Victualler’s profit to supply the carrion beef and fetid beer useless for any other purpose than to feed seamen. Punishment and promises were becoming equally useless. An officer at Portsmouth had to confess that punishing his men only made them more rebellious, and they revenged themselves by cutting his ship’s cable, in hopes that she might drift ashore; like Apsley, he remarked that they were only victualled from hand to mouth, but adds, ‘with refuse and old stuff.’[989] Charles was going to recover the Palatinate by means of his fleet, but Pennington’s opinion of the armed merchantmen which made up the bulk of the royal force was not high. He considered that two men-of-war could beat the fifteen he had with him, as their ordnance was mostly useless and they had not ammunition for more than a two hours’ fight.[990] Nor, from incidental references, can the discipline on these auxiliary ships have been such as to promise success. In 1625 they had to be forced under fire at Cadiz by threats; in 1628, at Rochelle, they fired vigorously, but well out of any useful or hazardous range. In this year the captain of one of them killed, injured, and maltreated his men, while he and five gentlemen volunteers consumed sixteen men’s allowance of food every day; and in January 1627, when some of them lying in Stokes Bay were ordered westward, they mutinied and would only sail for the Downs.

The Disorganisation:—The Remedies.

In despair the Council resorted to the expedient of a special commission[991] to inquire into the state of the Navy, nineteen in number and including eight seamen, perhaps in the hope of gaining time, but probably from sheer prescription of routine. While the naval organisation was crumbling, they took careful measurements of the dimensions of each ship, and anxiously examined whether Burrell had used his own or government barges for the conveyance of stores. When they inquired at what cost ships were built, the answer came in a petition from the Chatham shipwrights that they had been twelve months,

‘without one penny pay, neither having any allowance for meat or drink, by which many of them having pawned all they can, others turned out of doors for non-payment of rent, which with the cries of their wives and children for food and necessaries doth utterly dishearten them.’[992]

John Wells, storekeeper to the Navy, had 7½ years’ pay owing to him, and it may be inferred that, unless he was more honest than his fellows, the crown, if it did not pay him directly, had to do so indirectly. The Treasurer of the Navy, like the Victualler, had refused to make any more advances on his own credit, but when the Chatham men marched up to London in a body, he promised to settle their claims, a promise which was not fulfilled. Then the special commissioners had to deal with the crews of the Lion, Vanguard, and Reformation. The men of the Vanguard told them that they were in want of food, clothing, firing, and lodging, ‘being forced to lie on the cold decks.’[993] The sailors, like the shipwrights, came to London in the hope of obtaining some relief, but with even less success. Their ragged misery was an outrage on the curled and scented decorum of the court, and Charles perhaps feared that they might not confine themselves to mere vociferation, and, heroic as he looks on canvas, had no liking for the part of a Richard Plantagenet in face of a threatening mob. He confined himself to ordering the Lord Mayor to guard the gates and prevent them coming near the court, and Apsley, in his other capacity as lieutenant of the Tower, was directed to ‘repress the insolencies of mariners’ by ‘shot or other offensive ways.’[994] Probably death from Apsley’s ‘shot’ was, even if as certain, a less painful fate than that from his victuals. As for Charles, we may suppose that the lesson in kingly honour, justice, and responsibility was not thrown away on those of his seamen who lived till 1642.

Notwithstanding the financial straits of the government large schemes relating to the increase of the number of ships and the construction of new docks were being continually planned. In naval as in other affairs Buckingham’s vision was fixed on the future, careless of the present. Such money and supplies as were obtained did not go far towards relieving the necessities of the sailors. In May, Mervyn found that his own crew came unpleasantly ‘’twixt the wind and his nobility,’ for, ‘by reason of want of clothing, they are become so loathsome and so nastily sick as to be not only unfit to labour but to live.’[995] Among the State Papers, undated but assigned to this year, occurs the first instance of a round robin yet noticed; the men signing it refuse to weigh anchor until provisioned.[996]

The Disorganisation:—Its Continuance.

Despite all these drawbacks Buckingham had contrived to get together the Rhé fleet of 1627, by various means, although the pecuniary receipts were not nearly adequate to the requirements. Some 3800 seamen were employed, and when they came home were worse off than ever, and the monotonous sequence of complaints was continued with greater intensity. The crew of the Assurance deserted in a body; the sailors at Plymouth were stealing the soldiers’ arms and selling them to obtain bread,[997] and wages were running on at the rate of £5000 a month, because there was no money wherewith to pay off the men.[998] By December 500 sailors of the returned fleet had died at Plymouth, and both there and at Portsmouth the townspeople refused to have the sick men billeted ashore, for at Plymouth they professed to have never shaken off the infectious fever spread by the men of the Cadiz fleet. If we had any statistics at all of the death and disease on board the fleets of 1625-8, the figures would probably be ghastly in the terrible mental and physical suffering they would represent. In this century the ‘wailing-place’ on the quays of Amsterdam, where the friends and relatives of Dutch sailors bid them farewell, was well known, but in another sense, and too often for a longer farewell, every royal ship was a wailing-place for English wives and mothers. Nicholas, as Buckingham’s secretary, sometimes had franker communications than were sent to his master. Mervyn wrote to him that the king would shortly have more ships than men, there being commonly twenty or thirty fresh cases of sickness every day, and

‘the more than miserable condition of the men, who have neither shoes, stockings, nor rags to cover their nakedness ... all the ships are so infectious that I fear if we hold the sea one month we shall not bring men enough home to moor the ships. You may think I make it worse, but I vow to God that I cannot deliver it in words.... The poor men bear all as patiently as they can.... I much wonder that so little care be taken to preserve men that are so hardly bred. I have used my best cunning to make the Vanguard wholesome. I have caused her to be washed all over, fore and aft, every second day; to be perfumed with tar burnt and frankincense; to be aired ’twixt decks with pans of charcoal; to be twice a week washed with vinegar.... Yet if to-day we get together 200 men within four days afterwards we have not one hundred.’[999]

Watts, at Portsmouth, who, in the intervals of solicitation of money for himself and preferment for his son, wrote abusively of men who asked at least food and clothing in midwinter, was a man after Charles’s own heart, for he also had arranged with the governor of the town to use ‘shot,’ if necessary, when the seamen came showing their tattered clothes and making ‘scandalous speeches.’[1000] Mervyn, in the letter to Nicholas quoted above, admits that he has overdrawn his pay, but asks for another advance, and doubtless officers who had friends at court, or who could afford to bribe, had little difficulty in obtaining their salaries. Nicholas, for instance, who subsequently developed into a knight and secretary of state, had an itching palm on occasion. On the other hand, even in later years, when the pressure was not so great, if the paymaster or pursers advanced any portion of the wages already due to the mere sailor, a discount of 20 per cent. was deducted for the favour. The merchant was also competing with the royal service, owners paying 30s a month; therefore the need for men caused boys and weakly adults to be pressed, and during the winter the mortality among them was great.[1001] In January 1628 Mervyn reported from Plymouth that there were no hammocks, and

‘the men lodge on the bare decks ... their condition miserable beyond relation; many are so naked and exposed to the weather in doing their duties that their toes and feet miserably rot and fall away piecemeal, being mortified with extreme cold.’[1002]

A few days later he said that things were worse than ever, that the vessels were full of sick men, they being refused ashore.[1003] Notwithstanding the refusal to have them ashore their diseases spread so rapidly on land that both Plymouth and Portsmouth were ‘like to perish.’

A striking feature in this wretched story is the want of sympathy shown by nearly all the officials, high or low. These extracts are taken principally from the letters of those officers who felt for their men and endeavoured to obtain some alleviation of their distress, but many of the despatches contain only dry formal details or, as in the instances of Watts and Sir James Bagg—Eliot’s defamer and, from his absorptive capacity in relation to government money, known as the Bottomless Bagg—are filled with cowardly gibes and threats directed at men who could not obtain even their daily bread from the crown. It has long been held a point of honour with officers to share the dangers and hardships of those under their command, but in those years the superiors to whom the men looked for guidance and support left them to suffer alone, ‘the infection so strong that few of the captains or officers durst lie on board.’[1004] The sailors in the river were somewhat better off. Perhaps their proximity to the court, and potentialities of active protest, stirred the most sensitive portion of Charles’s conscience, and arrangements were made to billet them on the riverside parishes, at the rate of 3s 6d a man per week, till money could be provided to pay them. This was a plan which relieved the crown at the expense of the householder; nor does it appear to have been very successful, since a proclamation was issued on 17th February to repress the disorderliness of such billeted mariners and warning them not to presume to address the Commissioners. In March the pressed men at Plymouth armed themselves, seized the Guildhall, and there prepared to stand a siege.[1005] The issue is not stated, but although mutinies were continually happening they usually had little result, for if the men got away from the ship or town the endeavour to reach their homes would have been almost hopeless. They were only frantic outbursts of desperation by isolated bodies of a class which has always lacked the gift of facile expression, and has never learnt to combine. An official describes plainly the causes of these mutinies, and his paper is worth quoting in full:[1006]

‘1st. They say they are used like dogs, forced to keep aboard without being suffered to come ashore to refresh themselves. 2nd. That they have not means to put clothes on their backs to defend themselves from cold or to keep them in health, much less to relieve their poor wives and children. 3rd. That when they happen to fall sick they have not any allowance of fresh victuals to comfort them, or medicines to help recover them. 4th. That some of their sick fellows being put ashore in houses erected for them are suffered to perish for want of being looked unto, their toes and feet rotting from their bodies, and so smelling that none are able to come into the room where they are. 5th. That some provisions put aboard them is neither fit nor wholesome for men to live on. 6th. That therefore they had as lief be hanged as dealt with as they are.’

Gorges suggests that some of these complaints are frivolous and some untrue, and recommends the remedy, dear to the official soul, of a commission. The commission of 1626 had hardly ceased sitting, and how far the complaints were frivolous and untrue, can be judged by the evidence brought forward here.

Murder of Buckingham.

In April, 1628, Denbigh sailed to relieve Rochelle, and returned without having effected his purpose. Preparations then went on apace for the great fleet Buckingham proposed to command himself in August. The difficulty in obtaining provisions, and their quality, may be inferred from a petition of Sir Allen Apsley’s addressed directly to the king. He says that he has sold and mortgaged all his property, and that he and his friends had pledged their credit to the extent of £100,000.[1007] These were unpromising conditions under which to engage to supply a fleet which was intended to be as large as that of 1625, and as the crown could not suddenly replace the mechanism organised by the Victualler and his deputies, it was practically dependent on his efforts. It was probably due to the poverty of Sir Allen Apsley that in this fleet water was, for the first time, taken from a home port as what may be called a primary store.[1008] Hitherto, although water had been taken for cooking purposes, beer, as has been shown, had always been the recognised drink on ship board. In June the ships were being collected at Portsmouth, but with the usual troubles. There were two mutinies. ‘God be thanked, they are quieted,’ writes Coke, but the men ‘have no shift of clothes. Some have no shirts, and others but one for the whole year.’ There were few surgeons, and those few ‘haunt the taverns every day.’[1009] In one party of 150 pressed men sent down in July there were to be found saddlers, ploughmen, and other mechanics; some were old and weak and the majority useless. Pettifogging tricks were employed to trap the men. In one instance Buckingham ordered that certain vessels were not to be paid off till the Swiftsure and other ships were ready, and that then Peter White was to be present to at once press the crews for further service.[1010] Fire ships were required, but Coke found that they could not be had without £350 in cash, as no one would trust the Crown.[1011]

Buckingham himself did not intend to share the hardships of the beings of coarser clay under his command. A transport was fitted to serve as a kitchen and store ship for him, and the bill for his supplies came to £1056, 4s. It included such items as cards and dice, £2; wine, etc., £164; eight bullocks and a cow, £59; eighty sheep, £60; fifteen goats, £10; ten young porklings, £5; two sows with pig, £3; 980 head of poultry, £63, 1s.; 2000 eggs, £2, 10s; and pickled oysters, lemons, damask tapestry, and turkey carpets.[1012] Then came Felton’s knife, and we may hope that some of the sailors made an unwonted feast on the more perishable articles of this liberal collection. In any case, Buckingham’s murder was an unmixed good for them, although had he spared to the men some of that energy and care he gave, at least with good intention, to the improvement of the matériel of the navy, the verdict might have been different. But in his neglect of their rights or welfare he was not below the standard of his age, in which the feudal feeling remained without its sense of reciprocal obligation, and in which only a very few were impelled by conscience to more than the defence of their own rights.

Its Results.

One result of the shuffling of the political pack which followed Buckingham’s death was the appointment of Weston as Lord Treasurer. Weston, Mr Gardiner tells us, was neither honest, nor amiable, nor popular, but he was at any rate determined to re-introduce some order into the finances, and the sailors were among the first to reap the benefit. When the Rochelle fleet, which had sailed under Lindsey, returned, the men were as surprised as they were delighted to find that they were to be paid. ‘The seamen are much joyed with the Lord Treasurer’s care to pay them so suddenly.’[1013] All the same the civic authorities of Plymouth desired that the ships should be paid off somewhere else. They wrote to the Council that when the Cadiz expedition came back, 1600 of the townspeople died of diseases contracted from the soldiers and sailors, that many also perished after the return of the Rhé fleet, and that they heard that this Rochelle one was also very sickly, and if so, ‘it will utterly disable this place.’[1014] Either there was a relaxation of Weston’s alacrity in paying, or mutinous habits had become too natural to be suddenly discarded, as in November the crews of three of the largest of the men-of-war were robbing openly, for want of victuals, they said. Nevertheless we do not hear of many difficulties in connexion with the Rochelle fleet, and the work of payment may be assumed to have progressed with unexpected smoothness.

After Buckingham.

With the cessation of ambitious enterprises the demand for the services of the maritime population became less, although the smaller number of men employed were treated no better than when the government had the excuse, such as it was, of large expenditure. In 1629, Mervyn, commanding in the narrow seas, wrote to the Lords of Admiralty: ‘Foul winter weather, naked bodies, and empty bellies make the men voice the King’s service worse than a galley slavery.’[1015] It should be remarked that although hammocks were provided for over-sea service in the proportion of one for every two men, they were not yet furnished to ships stationed in home waters, a want which must have affected the health and contentment of the seamen even when they were properly fed. Again, Mervyn protests:—

‘I have written the state of six ships here in the Downs, two of which, the Dreadnought and 3rd whelp, have neither meat nor drink. The 10th whelp hath drunk water these three days. The shore affords soldiers relief or hope, the sea neither. Now with what confidence can punishment be inflicted on men who mutiny in these wants?... These neglects be the cause that mariners fly to the service of foreign nations to avoid his majesty’s.... His majesty will lose the honour of his seas, the love and loyalty of his sailors, and his royal navy will droop.’[1016]

They were prophetic words, and as another illustration of the methods which were to secure the sailors’ love and loyalty we find in October, among the notes of business to be considered by the Lords of the Admiralty, ‘poor men’s petitions presented above six months, and never read.’ Mutiny had become merely a form of protest, and captains looked forward to it as only a sign of dissatisfaction. One of them writes to Nicholas that his crew are in ‘an uproar’ about their offensive beer, and that if he finds no fresh supply at Plymouth he is sure of a mutiny;[1017] another commander was forced to pawn his spare sails and anchors to buy food for his men.[1018] Apsley died in 1630, leaving his affairs deeply involved, the crown still owing him large sums. His coadjutor, and then sole successor, Sir Sampson Darell, did not fare better at the hands of the government, although his requirements were so much less. In June 1632 he informed Nicholas that he would be unable to continue victualling unless he was paid, having raised all the money he could on his own estate.[1019] If he received anything on account it was evidently not enough to insure permanent improvement, since a year later we hear that the cruisers are ‘tied by the teeth’ in the Downs for want of provisions.[1020] During these years the debts incurred from the early expeditions of the reign were being slowly discharged, and the scantiness of the available resources for fresh efforts is shown by the way Pennington complains that six or seven weeks of preparation were needed to collect three months’ victuals for four ships.[1021]

From the absence of references in the State Papers to the non-payment of wages it would seem as though they were now paid with comparative regularity, but the expressions of disgust at the quality of the provisions are as continuous and vigorous as before. Besides methods of cheating in the quantities served out, for which the victuallers and pursers were answerable, ‘the brewers’—of course with the connivance of the victuallers—‘have gotten the art to sophisticate beer with broom instead of hops, and ashes instead of malt, and (to make it look the more lively) to pickle it with salt water, so that while it is new it shall seem to be worthy of praise, but in one month wax worse than stinking water.’[1022] The same writer says that the English were the unhealthiest of all ships, in consequence of the practical application of the proverb that ‘nothing will poison a sailor.’ Then he laments that English mariners, formerly renowned for patience and endurance, were now physically weak, impatient, and mutinous—and blames the sailor for the change.

The Ship-money Fleets.

The first systematic issue of ship-money writs was in October 1634, and in the summer of 1635, the resulting fleet was at sea. As usual the provisions were an unfailing source of indignation, and Lindsey, who was in command, told the Lords Commissioners that much of the beef was so tainted that when it was moved ‘the scent all over the ship is enough to breed contagion.’ The crews were made up with watermen and landsmen ignorant of their work, and many were weak and sickly; three men-of-war and several of the hired merchantmen were quite disabled by the sickness on board them.[1023] A special matter of complaint was the large number of volunteers and their servants who went for a harmless summer cruise on Lindsey’s ships. That they were useless and in the way was of less importance than that officers were aggrieved by finding their cabins taken from them to house these people in comfort, and that the seamen were irritated by seeing the idlers given the first choice of food, having to wait for their own till the visitors were served.[1024] If the greater part of the beef was fetid, and the officers and volunteers had right of selection, what could have been left for the men?

Apparently the sailors had as little liking as ever for the royal service, since, in 1636, the old difficulties were renewed in obtaining seamen for the second ship-money fleet under Northumberland. In April the men were said to be continually running away; in June out of 250 men turned over from the Anne Royal to the St Andrew 220 deserted.[1025] When Northumberland returned in the autumn, typhus was rife in his squadron, and Mervyn reported that the men ‘in this weather fall sick for want of clothing, most of them barefoot and scarcely rags to hide their skins.’[1026] Northumberland, not content with merely commanding in state, attacked the shortcomings of the naval administration furiously when he came ashore. Many of his strictures relate to subjects to be noticed, subsequently, but concerning the men he said that they were incapable both bodily and in their knowledge of seamanship; that out of 260 men in the James not more than twenty could steer, that in the Unicorn there was hardly a seaman besides the officers, that nearly one-third of the Entrance’s crew had never been to sea, and that of 150 men in the last-named ship only twelve could take the helm.[1027] The provisions, he said, were bad and meagre, and the men defrauded of a fourth or fifth of their allowance. Moreover sick men must either be kept on board ‘or turned ashore in danger of starving, not to be received into any house, so as some have been seen to die upon the strand for lack of relief.’

Such was the tender care monarchy by divine right, with its paraphernalia of Commissioners and Lords of the Admiralty, vouchsafed to that class of its subjects which happened to be voiceless and helpless. But if the coming struggle between divine right and capitalist right was to render the sailor’s assistance valuable, and temporarily improve his position, the experience of succeeding generations was to show that to him it made little difference whether life and health were sacrificed under the stately forms of monarchical procedure, or by the more obviously sordid processes of mercantile traffic. There was no ‘glorious revolution’ for men whose welfare depended on a legislature influenced by merchants and shipowners, and ignoble with the soulless ethics of the eighteenth century.

Victualling.

According to official documents the victualler, Sir Sampson Darell, must have died not long after Apsley, as his accounts for five years are passed by his executrix.[1028] The absence of professional control did not probably cause any extra mismanagement; at any rate no murmurs are heard on that score. It is impossible to say now whether Apsley was a victim, or only received his deserts, in having claims for £69,436 in 1626 and £94,985 in 1627 rejected because his books were signed by only three instead of four Commissioners and on account of insufficient particulars. As they were not finally refused until 1637 his representatives were allowed plenty of time to prove their case. In February 1637 John Crane, ‘chief clerk of our kitchen,’ was made Surveyor of marine victuals, his appointment dating from 20th Nov. 1635. The allowance of drink and solid food was the same as in the last century, and sugar, rice, and oatmeal were medical luxuries theoretically provided for sick men in the 1636 fleet, on the equipment of which Northumberland expressed such trenchant criticisms. Crane undertook the victualling at the rate of eightpence halfpenny a man per day at sea, and sevenpence halfpenny in harbour, but in March 1638 he gave the necessary year’s notice to terminate his contract.[1029] He found that during 1636 and 1637 he had lost a penny three farthings a month on each man, and owing to the general rise in prices, anticipated a further loss of as much as 3s 4¾d a head, per month, in 1638. He entreated an immediate release from his bargain, or he would be ruined, and he had thirteen children. In all these memorials one invariably finds that the petitioner possesses an enormous family.

In 1637 the Earl of Northumberland was again at sea in what Sir Thomas Roe expected would be ‘one turn to the west in an honourable procession,’ and the Earl himself wrote, ‘No man was ever more desirous of a charge than I am to be quit of mine.’[1030] He was, however, the first competent admiral among the nobility that Charles had been able to find. From the absence of any accounts of mutiny and disorder we may take it that either the men were better treated this year or that the superior officers were tired of complaining. In 1638 Northumberland was ill, and all the work the ship-money fleet did was to convoy two powder-laden vessels through the ships blockading Dunkirk.[1031]

Discipline.

We have seen that men like Pennington and Mervyn had not the heart to punish for insubordination under the circumstances of privation which made their crews seditious and disobedient, and the normal discipline on a man-of-war was, in all likelihood, sufficiently lax. Some of the regulations, however, if they were carried out, were strict enough, although they will compare favourably with the bloodthirsty articles of war of the succeeding century, and they show some difference from previous customs. Prayer was said twice daily, before dinner and after the psalm sung at setting the evening watch, and any one absent was liable to twenty-four hours in irons. Swearing was punished by three knocks on the forehead with a boatswain’s whistle, and smoking anywhere but on the upper deck, ‘and that sparingly,’ by the bilboes. The thief was tied up to the capstan, ‘and every man in the ship shall give him five lashes with a three-stringed whip on his bare back.’ This is, I think, the first mention of any form of cat. The habitual thief was, after flogging, dragged ashore astern of a boat and ignominiously dismissed with the loss of his wages. For brawling and fighting the offender was ducked three times from the yardarm, and similarly towed ashore and discharged; while for striking an officer he was to be tried for his life by twelve men, but whether shipmates or civilians is not said.[1032] If a man slept on watch three buckets of water were to be poured upon his head and into his sleeves, and any one except ‘gentlemen or officers’ playing cards or dice incurred four hours of manacles. It is suggestive to read that ‘no man persume to strike in the ship but such officers as are authorised.’[1033]

There was no specially prepared fleet in 1639, but in October Pennington was in command of a few ships in the Downs, watching the opposed Dutch and Spanish fleets also lying there. Both he and Northumberland had pressed the King, but in vain, for instructions as to his course of action in certain contingencies. At last directions were given him that in the event of fighting between them he was to assist the side which appeared to be gaining the day, a manner of procedure which Charles doubtless thought was dexterous diplomacy, but which most students of the international history of his time will consider as ignominious as it was futile. The Dutch attacked the Spaniards as they were taking in 500 barrels of gunpowder, supplied with the connivance of the English government[1034]—again Charles’s trading instincts were too strong—drove a score of their vessels ashore, and scattered the remainder. Unfortunately Pennington, instead of also attacking the Spaniards, fired into the Dutch, who did not reply.[1035]

The Seamen and the Civil War.

During 1640 and 1641 Charles was fully occupied with his Scotch and parliamentary difficulties, and naval business was again falling into disorder. In July 1641 Northumberland tells Pennington that he does not see how the insubordination the latter reports is to be remedied, as there is no money with which to pay wages.[1036] In October Sir William Russell, one of the Treasurers of the Navy, had been a long time out of town, and the other, Sir Henry Vane (the younger), ‘seeing there is no money in the office, never comes near us.’ Perhaps it was not altogether displeasing to the parliamentary leaders that, in view of the arbitrament towards which King and Parliament were tending, the seamen should be rendered discontented and rebellious. In January 1642, 2000 sailors offered their services and protection to Parliament, and when, in July, the King appointed Pennington, and Parliament Warwick, to the command of the fleet, the men in the Downs, apparently without any hesitation, followed Warwick, although the former must have had with them the influence of a trusted and favourite officer. In several instances the crews of ships on outlying stations forced their captains to submit, or put their royalist officers ashore and themselves took charge. It is difficult to speak with absolute certainty, but an examination of the data available leads to the conclusion that only one small vessel, the Providence, adhered to the royal cause.

We need not conclude that this unanimity implied any deep feeling about the general misgovernment of Charles or the important constitutional questions at issue. The sailor, contrary to the impression apparently prevailing among feminine novelists, is usually an extremely matter-of-fact individual, with the greater portion of his attention fixed on the subjects of his pay and food. All he could associate with the crown were memories of starvation and beggary, of putrid victuals fraught with disease, and wages delayed, in payment of which, when he at last received them, he found a large proportion stick to the hands of minor officials. The Parliament paid him liberally and punctually, and he, on his side, served it honestly and well. For him was not necessary—perhaps he was not capable of feeling—the curious psychical exaltation of the ‘New Model,’ but in a steady, unimaginative way, without much enthusiasm but without a sign of hesitation, he kept his faith and did more to destroy royalist hopes than historians, with few exceptions, have supposed. Under the administration of the Navy Committee there were no recurrences of the confusion and unruliness which had before existed, and until the Rainsborow mutiny of 1648, speedily repented, the seamen showed no symptom, for six years, of discontent or of regret for the part they had chosen.

Parliament and the Seamen.

Without feeling an indignation which would have been in advance of their age at the hardships and dishonesty of which the sailor had been the victim, the position of the parliamentary chiefs compelled them to treat him with a discreet consideration. He was fed decently; wages were raised to nineteen shillings a month, and were given in full from the date of his joining his ship, instead of from that of its sailing; and an attempt was made to raise a sufficient number of men without impressment, the officers responsible being only directed ‘to use their best persuasion.’[1037] Seamen, however, had been too long accustomed to compulsion to enter into the principles of voluntaryism, and an act allowing pressing and punishing contumacy with three months’ imprisonment, must have been received by them as something they could understand.[1038] The utter absence of difficulties or remonstrances during the years of the civil war shows how smoothly the naval administration worked, and Parliament appeared to place even more reliance on the sailors than on their officers, since on 18th Oct. 1644, Warwick issued a proclamation ordering that ‘none shall obey the commands of their superior officers ... if the same commands be tending towards disloyalty towards the Parliament.’ This was a dangerous power to place in the hands of the men, unless it was felt that their discipline and fidelity could be depended upon.

The late Mrs Everett Green speaks of ‘the inherent loyalty of the sailors to their King,’[1039] making this remark in connection with, and as explanatory of, the difficulty experienced by the Council of State in obtaining men in 1653. I must confess that, notwithstanding the weight justly attaching to her opinions, I am quite unable to see during these years any sign of this loyalty. Under the government of Charles they had been compelled to serve by force, and had lost no opportunity of venting their anger and discontent; when the occasion came they eagerly and unanimously fought against the sovereign to whom they were supposed to be inherently loyal, without one instance of desertion or dissatisfaction of sufficient mark to be noticed in the State Papers. When a mutiny did at last occur it was due to circumstances connected not with the rights of the King, but with the narrower personal jealousies of naval command; it happened when the fighting was done, and, in all probability, would not have happened at all under the stress of conflict. During the Commonwealth they continued to serve the state under conditions of great strain and trial, which might well have tried men of greater foresight and self-control than seamen, without, with perhaps one exception, more than slight and unimportant outbursts of insubordination of a character which, allowing for the looser discipline of that time, occur to-day in all large standing forces. Whatever, at any time, their momentary irritation against the Parliament, it never took the form of loyalty to Charles II. It may be suggested that a more likely explanation of the difficulties of 1653 lies in the fact that the estimates required 16,000 men against the 3000 or 4000 sufficient for the fleets of Charles I.[1040] At the most liberal computation the returns of 1628,[1041] do not give, allowing for omissions, more than 18,000 men available for the royal and merchant marine; at least double that number would have been necessary to supply easily the demands of the two services in 1653. In no case under the Commonwealth did the men show that despairing recklessness of consequences which characterised their outbreaks between 1625 and 1642. More significant still is the fact that the savage fighting of the first Dutch war, against the most formidable maritime antagonist we have ever faced, was performed in a fashion very different from the perfunctory and half-hearted service rendered to Charles I. And it is a further curious illustration of their hereditary loyalty that while they endured much hardship and privation rather than serve either under Rupert or Tromp against the Commonwealth, we are told by Pepys that they manned the Dutch ships by hundreds—perhaps thousands—during the wars of Charles II.

If, on the other hand, we are to really believe that ‘inherent loyalty’ was continuously latent in the English sailor, what words are fitting for the selfish and reckless indifference to the simplest human rights which tortured him into twenty years of consistent rebellion? On sea as on land Charles’s misdeeds followed him home. In his days of power he had been deaf to the appeals of men who perished that he might attempt to be great, and to the cries of their suffering wives and children. In 1642 the sailors were deaf to his commands. What might—in all human probability would—have been the result after Edgehill if, during the winter of 1642-3, he had been able to blockade the Thames?

Merchant Seamen.

Private shipowners have always paid higher wages than the crown, and for several centuries the latter offered no compensatory advantages. From various chance allusions the rates of merchant seamen’s wages during this period are found to vary between 22s and 30s a month. The stores provided for them could not have been worse than those of a man-of-war; but they had special difficulties, peculiar to the merchant service, to expect when in private employment. In 1628 among their grievances they complained that they were liable to make good any damage done to cargo, even after it had left the ship, until it was safely stored in the merchant’s warehouse.[1042] In 1634 they petitioned, in view of the dulness of trade, that exportation of merchandise in foreign bottoms should be prohibited,[1043] but a year later a more important matter occupied their attention. All engagements were made by verbal contract, and it often happened at the end of the voyage that the owner disputed the terms, when the sailor was left helpless, having no proof to bring forward.[1044] Moreover, if, as frequently occurred, he was pressed out of a homeward bound vessel, his position was still more hopeless, while if he died at sea there was small chance of his family obtaining anything. In 1638 it was intended to form a Trinity House fund, on the plan of the Chatham Chest, for the benefit of merchant seamen and officers; one shilling a month was to be deducted for this purpose, from the wages of officers, and fourpence from the pay of the men, except those belonging to coasters, who were to give sixpence.[1045] The matter progressed so far that there was a proclamation issued in accordance with these views,[1046] but the scheme did not come into operation till 1694. In that year it was enforced in connection with Greenwich Hospital at the rate of sixpence a man; in 1747 this was raised to one shilling and so continued until 1834. The whole story belongs to a later volume, but the merchant sailor never received the least benefit from the levy extorted from his scanty earnings, and at a moderate computation was robbed of at least £2,500,000 during that period. But he helped to endow many fat sinecures and to thus support the Constitution.

If from one case referred to a court of law we may infer others, the form and amount of punishment on a trader was left to the discretion of the captain. On a Virginia ship an insubordinate boy was hung up by his wrists with 2 cwt. tied to his feet, with what results we are not told. The boy’s complaint came before Sir H. Martin, judge of the Admiralty court, who refused any redress, because of the necessary ‘maintenance of sea discipline.’[1047] But notwithstanding hard fare, hard usage, and sometimes doubtful wages, the position of the sailor on a merchantman was infinitely preferable to his fate when compelled to exchange it for a man-of-war. We meet with no instances of mutiny on merchant ships until they are hired by the crown, and the traditional hardihood and courage of the English seaman were always evinced when he was free of the crushing burden of the royal service. Sir Kenelm Digby, when commanding a squadron in the Mediterranean in 1628, noticed that while foreigners invariably ran from him, the English, without knowing his nationality, always stopped and prepared to fight ‘were they never so little or contemptible vessels.’[1048]

The number available.

With proper organisation there were sufficient men available at the beginning of the reign to have manned both the royal and merchant marine, as will be seen from the following returns made in 1628, but it is probable that the numbers did not increase much during subsequent years:—[1049]

Seamen Fishermen

London 3422 302

Kent 181 231

Cinque Ports 699 193

Essex 309 357

Suffolk 804 326

Norfolk 600 436

Lincoln 66 126

Devon 453 86

Northumberland 33 260

Cumberland 72

South Cornwall 731 393

North ” 154 88

South Wales 753

Southampton and Isle of Wight 321 209

Dorset 958 86

Bristol 823

There were 2426 watermen in London, also liable to impressment. Of the seamen two-thirds were at sea, one-third at home, their favourite abiding place being Ratcliff. Yorkshire, North Wales, Chester, and some parts of Sussex are omitted, and the figures for Northumberland cannot include the Newcastle coal traffic, which in 1626 employed 300 colliers;[1050] it may be, however, that their crews are reckoned in the London total.

In various ways, during the war time, Parliament showed its satisfaction with the work done by officers and men, and occasionally rewarded them by extra gratuities of a month’s pay, or presents of wine. Doubtless these donations were also in the nature of bribes on the part of a power without much historic prestige compared with its opponent, and depending for existence on the goodwill of men who served with a closer regard to pay than to sentiment; but that the parliamentary authorities considered their relations with the Navy fairly secure is shown by the fact that in 1645 they ventured to place the service under martial law.[1051] In 1647 wages, per month, were raised for officers, according to rates, as follows—[1052]

£ s d £ s d

Captain 7 0 0 to 21 0 0

Lieutenant 3 10 0 ” 4 4 0

Master 3 18 8 ” 7 0 0

Master’s mate 2 2 0 ” 3 5 4

Pilot 2 2 0 ” 3 5 4

Carpenter 1 15 0 ” 3 3 0

Boatswain 1 17 4 ” 3 10 0

Gunner 1 15 0 ” 3 3 0

The Chatham Chest.

The Chatham Chest, founded by Hawkyns and others in 1590, for the relief and support of injured or disabled sailors, was not of so much use to them during these years as it should have been. The original contribution was sixpence a month from able, and fourpence from ordinary, seamen, with threepence from boys. In 1619 the gunners joined the fund, and from 1626 all, whether able and ordinary, seamen or gunners, were to pay sixpence.[1053] The sixpences were unfailingly deducted from their wages, but the distribution was more irregular. Every formality was employed for the safe custody of the money, and in 1625 an iron chest with five locks was ordered for this purpose, the keys to be kept by five representative officers of different grades, who could only open it when together, and who were to be changed every twelve months. As an illustration of the value of these precautions the Treasurer of the Navy, Russell, the very next year took £2600, out of the Chest with which to pay wages, subsequently excusing himself by the ‘great clamours’ then being made and the poverty of the state. He did not commence to return this money till 1631, and in 1636 £500 of it was still owing. Sir Sackville Crowe, when Treasurer between July 1627 and December 1629, took out £3000, and this sum, with the accruing interest, is regularly carried forward as a good asset till 1644, when there is a gap of ten years in the accounts, and in 1654 it no longer appears. From the character of the man it is very unlikely that he ever paid. In 1632 a commission of inquiry issued, but if any report was ever made it has not come down to us. In January 1636 the Chest had £542 in hand and possessed Chislett farm producing £160 a year,[1054] but it was said that its narrow resources were further depleted by money having ‘been bestowed on men that never were at sea.’

Sir John Wolstenholme and others were directed, in December 1635, to inquire into the administration, and their report was sent in by April 1637.[1055] The yearly receipts from land were now £205; since 1617, when there was £3145 in hand, £2580 had been received in rents and £12,600 from the sixpences. Out of this £3766 had been expended in purchasing land and £10,621 in relieving seamen; £159 remained in the Chest, and £3780 was owing to it. Of the £3780 some of the items went back to Elizabethan days, and Roger Langford, Sir Peter Buck, some of the master shipwrights, and two ladies were among the debtors. Between 1621 and 1625, inclusive, there was paid £1722 in gratuities and pensions, and between 1625 and 1629, £1372;[1056] as the first series were mostly peace, and the second war years, the men were either very successful in avoiding injury between 1625 and 1629 or, as is more likely, were defrauded of the benefits they could rightly claim. The result of the commission was that fresh rules, signed by Windebank, were shortly afterwards made, directing the Treasurer of the Navy to pay over the sixpences within one month of their deduction from wages, to make up the accounts yearly and ‘publish them to all the governors,’ that no pension was to exceed £6, 8s 4d a year, although an additional gratuity might be given, and that the keepers of the keys were to be changed yearly.[1057] As the last regulation was only a repetition of the one made in 1625, it is to be presumed that it had been previously ignored.

Neither now nor afterwards, neither in official papers nor in the sheaves of ephemeral publications which enlightened this and the succeeding century, does it seem, with one exception, to have entered into the minds of those who ruled or those who tried to teach that the cost of providing for the wants or age of men disabled by service should in justice fall upon the country they had spent their youth and health in protecting, instead of on an accident fund maintained from their own meagre earnings. The one government which in this, as in other matters, had a higher perception of its duties was that of Cromwell, and even here only in a limited sense. The host of pamphleteers who in the succeeding reigns lamented the condition of the royal and merchant marine, or aired their universal panaceas for its ills, only rang the changes on further methods for the exploitation of the seaman to the private profit of the shipowner and the general profit of the state. For him to carry the burden of empire was to be its own reward.

The only consecutive accounts preserved for this reign are contained in two volumes kept in the Museum at Greenwich.[1058] They extend from 14th April 1637 to 23rd April 1644, and, in round figures, give the following results:—

Owing to chest Received Expended Received from land No. of Pensioners[1059]

£ £ £ £

1637-8 3768 1545 1361 248 62

1638-9 6215 1609 1215 59

1639-40 5600 1849 1364 59

1640-1 5200 2371 2019 35

1641-2 4800 2761 2635 479 55

1642-3 4400 2108 1738 60

1643-4[1060] 4400 1238 958 61

1644[1061] 4400 845 483 321[1062]

We do not know on what principle donations were allowed, but, besides being slow and uncertain, gratuities were frequently dispensed by favour rather than by merit. In 1637 a man hurt in 1628 received £2, and Apslyn, a shipwright, had £5, 3s 4d, being compensation for the loss of his apprentice’s services during 62 days, a sort of loss certainly never intended to be indemnified by the founders of the Chest. The majority of the men on the pension list, had £5 or £6 each, but most of the payments to injured men were of a donative character not involving any further responsibility. Medical charges relating to the dockyards were also met from the Chest, a Chatham surgeon being paid £43, 1s 4d in 1638 for attending to shipwrights injured while working on the Sovereign of the Seas. The next year has a somewhat belated entry of £3 to Wm. Adam, barber-surgeon, ‘for sundry hurts and bruises received in Queen Elizabeth’s service,’ and again we find £33, 11s 4d paid to a Woolwich medical man for care of shipwrights injured in rebuilding the Prince; in 1640 surgeons were attached to the dockyards whose salaries of £40 a year were paid from the Chest money. The compensation for a bruise ranged from £1 to £2. Sometimes widows were granted burial money and a further small sum for ‘present relief,’ but never, apparently, pensions. A normally recurring item is a gift of £4, 10s a year to the almshouse founded by Hawkyns at Chatham, and with equal regularity there is an annual outlay of some £5 for the governors’ dinners.

However open to criticism may have been the administration of the Chatham Chest at this time, it was undoubtedly in a condition of ideal purity compared with the depths of organised infamy to which it sank during the eighteenth century.

The Rainsborow Mutiny.

The reign of Charles I commenced with mutinies; it ended in 1648 with another which deserves examination, since upon it some writers have based an inference of general unfaithfulness to the Parliament, while in reality, whatever conclusions may be deduced, that, so far as the bulk of the men were concerned, is not one of them. From the days of Elizabeth, when they were accustomed to be led by captains who were seamen by vocation and sometimes by descent, often of their own class, and who understood them and their wants, the men had shown an intense dislike to the landsmen who by a change of system in later years had been placed over them, who obtained their posts mainly by rank or influence, were ignorant of maritime matters, and were associated with a succession of disasters and years of abject misery. Manwayring, writing in the reign of James I, says that volunteers usually returned knowing as little as when they sailed, since the professional seamen hated them, and gentlemen generally, and would give no instruction. Another seaman attributed the disasters of the early years of the reign to the appointment of landsmen as captains and officers.[1063] The experiences of more recent years were not likely to have lessened that feeling.

During the war, therefore, the fleet had been commanded chiefly by admirals and captains who were trained seamen of no exceptional social position, but, judging from subsequent events, there must have been a sufficient leaven of landsmen in places of trust to keep alive the old prejudices. When, therefore, Wm. Batten, an experienced officer of many years’ standing, who was vice-admiral and commanding in the Channel, and who had done good service to the state, was displaced in 1647, and his responsible charge given to Colonel Rainsborow, who began actual control in January 1648, there was doubtless some murmuring, although no evidence of it has survived. Nothing occurred during the winter, and in May 1648 there were forty-one ships in commission, of which only three were commanded by military officers; but the appointment of Rainsborow may have been regarded, as it actually proved to be, as the commencement of a return to the old system. Moreover the Navy, generally, was presbyterian in feeling, while Rainsborow was a fanatical Independent and, judging from one of the accusations brought against him, does not appear to have exercised his authority with tact or discretion. In addition to this a certain amount of ill-feeling existed between the army and the Navy, the latter not being inclined to coerce the Parliament to the extent desired by the army, and Batten, in the ‘Declaration’ which explained his reasons for desertion, dwelt on the efforts of the army leaders ‘to flood the ships with soldiers.’ If the accusation was true, it would be a certain way, in the state of feeling between the two services, to give fresh life to the latent antagonism existing. We have no details of the workings of discontent which led up to action any more than we have of the secret cabals which preceded the Spithead mutiny of 1797, but in each case the outbreak was equally sudden. Towards the end of May the crews in the Downs put Rainsborow ashore, giving as their reasons:—

1st. The parliament of late grant commissions to the sea commanders in their own names, leaving out the King. 2nd. Several land-men made sea commanders. 3rd. The insufferable pride, ignorance, and insolency of Col. Rainsborow, the late vice-admiral, alienated the hearts of the seamen.[1064]

Rainsborow had made his mark as a soldier, but he was not a stranger to the sea, for he had commanded a man-of-war in 1643. It is noticeable that no complaints are made about their treatment by the government, about their pay or victuals, and succeeding events showed how little the great majority of the fleet were in sympathy with the grandiloquent threats of the ringleaders on the King’s behalf. Warwick was at once sent to resume the command of the fleet and adjust the differences existing. Whitelocke says that the men ‘sent for the Earl of Warwick’ and that ‘the Derby House Committee, to follow the humour of the revolters,’ directed Warwick to go, so that at this stage it is evident that having rid themselves of Rainsborow, they looked to Warwick rather than to Charles. We do not know what measures the earl took, but, in the last days of June, the crews of nine ships,[1065] perhaps terrified at finding they received such slight support from the others and fearing punishment, possibly also influenced by Batten, went over with him to the Prince of Wales in Holland. That so long an interval elapsed between the commencement of the revolt and their desertion shows how little the latter was at first contemplated.

It has been recently said: ‘While the army was so formidable the navy scarcely existed. The sailors generally were for the King. Many had revolted and carried their ships across to Charles II in Holland, while in the crews that remained disaffection prevailed dangerously.’ It would be difficult to mass more inaccuracies in so many words. There were forty-one fighting-ships actually at sea, a larger number than had been collected since the days of Elizabeth, and immeasurably superior as a fighting machine to anything which had existed since 1588. The ‘many’ which had revolted were nine, and of these three were small pinnaces of an aggregate of 210 tons and 180 men; of the others, one was a second and the rest third and fourth-rates. If ‘disaffection prevailed dangerously,’ it is strange that not only did none of the remaining ships join the revolters, but they were known to be ready to fight them, and Batten on one occasion avoided an action on account of ‘the very notable resistance’ to be expected.[1066] Instead of being disaffected, Warwick found that on board his own ship they prepared for fighting ‘with the greatest alacrity that ever I saw ... which, as the captains informed me, was likewise the general temper of the rest of the fleet.’ Finally the sailors in the Downs, who ‘generally were for the King’ and were actuated by ‘inherent loyalty,’ concurred in December in the Army Remonstrance, requiring that Charles I, ‘the capital and grand author of our troubles,’ should be brought to justice for the ‘treason, blood, and mischief’ he had caused. The after story of the revolted ships is just as instructive on the point of their disaffection to the Parliament. No sooner had they reached Holland than the men commenced to desert. By November five vessels had been brought back to England, and the ill-will manifested on the others was so pronounced that it was necessary to place strong bodies of cavaliers on board to keep the seamen in subjection.[1067]

The outburst would have been serious had it been general. It was confined to a small section of the naval force, was due to dissensions relating to men rather than principles, and gives small countenance to the view that the Navy repented the part it had taken. The loyalty of the majority and the speedy penitence of the minority were the best tests of the temper in which the Parliament was judged by those who upheld it afloat; and if the disaffected minority loved Rainsborow and his employers little they showed that they liked Charles Stuart less.